Tag: Find A Life Coach in South Miami

In old days, there were no life coaches. In fact, business owners in South Miami were forced to focus on the profit and the things which were required to run a business. Buy nowadays that scenario is changed and now business owners are focusing on return on investments, profits, customer value, and other goals. There are plenty of ways a business owner can improve their business but for the small or long-term success of the business, it required to get some feedback and consultation or coaching from the industry persons. By attendingBusiness Coachingsessions, business owners can improve their business a lot. Below are the 3 ways through which business coaching can improve and deliver results in order to improve the business in a short term in South Miami .

South Miami Life Coach: Small Steps Can Lead To Success

It seems that everyone I meet these days wants to be a life coach. “My passion is to help people find their passion.” “My purpose is to help people find their purpose.” I hear this at many of the personal development retreats and career workshops I attend.

This is a noble and beautiful goal; to dedicate your life to empowering others to reach their full potential. In a world where 70% of Americans are disengaged with their jobs, and millions of people are depressed, unfulfilled, or addicted to prescription pain medication, we certainly need more coaches, enablers, and givers.

In 2012, the International Coach Federation (ICF) reported that life coaching is a $2 billion a year industry. Since there is wide disagreement on the value of professional coaching certification programs and many coaches don’t pursue formal training, this number is probably higher.

The problem I have with life coaches is not their lack of certification or qualifications. I have many friends who lack formal training, yet are excellent coaches. Furthermore, I’m not sure anyone can be certified in something as broad as “life coaching,” whether it’s a 2-week, 2-month, or 2-year program.

The problem I have with some life coaches is that they sell their life, disguised as a coaching product. Perhaps a result of the growing popularity of the lifestyle design industry, these life coaches spend more time trying to live and sell a lifestyle that suits them, rather than investing in the service they are allegedly providing to others.

I see a lot of life coaches post photos on Instagram of themselves on the beach or at yoga retreats with captions like, “Live life full! Be free! #lovemylife” These pictures are in places like Hawaii, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Bali — often at all-inclusive resorts or very pristine beaches. Usually the coaches are incredibly attractive people with tan skin who seemingly spend a lot of time at the gym or do yoga all the time (as in, like, every second of every day).

We should all strive to live a beautiful life (whatever that means for each of us), I’m just not sure the point is to sell that life. Depicting an idealized life that others should aspire to is dangerous. It misleads clients into thinking that their goal should be to emulate and idolize their all-knowing coach. It also misleads other coaches into adopting deceiving marketing practices and making false promises.

Here’s the thing: you don’t need to have a pristine life to be a coach. Coaching is about inquiry, asking the right questions, listening, empathy, and empowering someone to become their best self. I know many talented coaches whose life doesn’t look that great on social media — some of these coaches aren’t even on social media at all! They make a living because their clients recommend their services. They are talented coaches because they know how to coach, not because their life is perfect or they know how to run an auto drip campaign on MailChimp.

I don’t do much 1-on-1 coaching, because personally, given my background and lack of coaching training, I think I can provide more value writing, speaking, and doing workshops, but when someone approaches me about hiring me as their career coach, I ask them why they want to work with me. If they say anything close to “your life is awesome, I want your life,” I don’t respond to their email. Don’t get me wrong, my name is Smiley — I love my life. But it’s my life. It’s not intended to be someone else’s.

Trust me, my life isn’t for you. I have five roommates. My kitchen has a mice problem. My sink is constantly full of dishes. There are fruit flies everywhere. My bedroom is so small it barely fits my bed. I bring tea bags with me wherever I go to save the $3 (that adds up to like $60 a month!). I can’t for the life of me find a moisturizing cream that keeps my hands moist — I’ve tried like seven different kinds. I can’t drink coffee or alcohol anymore since I have really bad acid reflux. I love to do yoga but I fart a lot when I do it, so I can’t go to class more than once a week. My back is already starting to hurt — and I’m only 31!

These are the kinds of things I spend my time thinking about — it’s just not Instagram life coach worthy material. I can’t post a picture of me wallowing in back pain with the caption, “Love my life! #lifeisamazing. Sign up for my 3-step plan to fulfillment now — it’s only $495 — ahhhhh, my back!”

I refuse to sell some notion that my life is ideal or perfect — it’s inauthentic and it’s bullshit. I see some life coaches prancing around the beach and I’m like, “#Livefree?! You just quit your job! I know your ass is broke! Ahhhhh, my back!”

All of us (myself included) are sharing our highlight reels on social media, but I am immediately turned off by life coaches who make life seem easy or perfect in order to sell their product. These coaches give a bad reputation to talented coaches who have a tangible and valuable service to offer.

The coaches I know who make a living from coaching, don’t spend their days at the beach. They are on video calls with clients, working with executives and senior managers in office buildings, meeting with students at universities, and running trainings at leadership development programs. They don’t work 4 hours a week. They work 40 or 50 hours a week, sometimes more. Their life isn’t perfect (no ones life is perfect), but they are still a great coach.

When we depict an idealized life others should aspire to, we ignore the fact that most people’s lives are actually really complicated and nuanced. Most of the time, when people are “in flow,” “coming alive,” or “living with purpose,” they are not at the beach or sipping a green smoothie or doing endless yoga or traveling in a foreign country, they are studying in a dimly-lit library at 1 in the morning, sweating in a noisy warehouse, or a managing a classroom full of restless children. Or, they are cooking dinner for their family.

The goal of coaching (and personal development work in general) should not be to get people to ignore these day-to-day rituals, but to find more personal meaning in all aspects of their life. It’s not about escaping to the beach and posting a photo (#lovemylife!), it’s about finding meaning, purpose, and joy in the day-to-day (and sometimes mundane) rituals that make up our lives.

We need more coaches. More business coaches, relationship coaches, career coaches, leadership coaches, communications coaches, and even more life coaches. But we need coaches who are honest about the services they are able to provide to their clients (and just as authentic about the services they are not qualified to offer).

By all means, design your ideal life and travel to exotic locations—just be conscious of what it is you’re actually selling. I’m all for personal development retreats (even ones on the beach) that offer honest and practical solutions for navigating the complex and nuanced world we live in. I have participated in retreats that are extremely powerful; offering someone permission to be who they are, embrace their fears, overcome roadblocks and barriers, set new intentions, align work with purpose, integrate health and wellness into daily routines, and build a community of like-minded peers.

Life is not easy. There are no 3 simple steps to fulfillment or 10 ways to do anything. Happiness cannot be bought for $495 (or $4,095). There is not one answer and there is no quick fix, so let’s stop selling one.

Smiley Poswolsky is the author of The Quarter-Life Breakthrough: a guide for millennials to find meaningful work. Follow @whatsupsmiley and get free resources at smileyposwolsky.com.

Special thanks to my friends Peter Rubin (a business coach and relationship coach), and Lauren Weinstein (a consultant and coach) for reading a draft of this piece and offering feedback. If you are interested in learning more about pursuing coaching as a profession, I recommend reading Coaching is Calling, by Lauren Weinstein.

Best Life Coach for Personal Productivity

If you've found this article from a Google search, I assume that you are already familiar with what a life coach is. Even if you are, reading my article "What is a Life Coach" will provide you with valuable information on what exactly a life coach does, how coaching contracts work, what typical coaching formats look like and how you might want to focus your business as you consider becoming a coach.

This article is geared towards the logistics on what you can do to become a life coach and start your own business.

What Credentials do I Need?

At the risk of turning people off to life coaching in this article, I am going to give you the facts about people that are calling themselves coaches. Truth be told - there are NO job requirements to become a coach. Sounds scary huh? Put a sign up, print some business cards, call yourself a life coach and you are good to go. Pretty easy business to build eh?

Lets take a bit of a closer look here. What I am really saying is that by law, no professional certification is required for someone to call him or herself a life coach - or coach (often the word 'life' is either omitted or replaced with a different word such as 'executive', 'wellness', 'lifestyle management' or 'business'). So unlike a psychologist, a physical therapist, registered dietician, a contractor, or a lawyer, the state and country (USA) does not recognize a life coach as a credentialed profession. Therefore, no license is required to call yourself a coach (at least as of the date this article is posted).

Lets look at some other examples of similar professions that might fall into the same category. How about that big one of 'consultant'. There are lots of consultants out there consulting on everything you can think of - typically a consultant needs no license to be a consultant, just experience doing so. Similar to a coach, a consultant with no experience at all can draft up a business card and start doing business. Of course the big question is whether or not you'd be able to sell anyone on your services given that background. A computer consultant would probably have trouble selling themselves if they knew nothing about computers!

Before Calling Yourself a Coach...

If you are intending to call yourself a coach, please understand what it means to give yourself that title. Without government regulations, I admit you can stake your claim at coachhood with relative ease, however its a discredit to the professionals with years of experience and training if you simply use the word as an allure for clients and in any way you are misrepresenting what the coaching profession is all about. I'd suggest reading a coaches code of ethics to see if what you are offering could truly be considered coaching.

One problem that I see is that many people who are misrepresenting the profession do not even recognize what it means to be a coach. I've seen MLM (multi-level marketing) companies give their marketers buttons to put on their shirt stating 'Wellness Coach' - when all they know is a couple of herbal supplements that the company sells. I've seen Real Estate Agents call themselves 'Real Estate Coaches' because they wanted to differentiate themselves from the crowd of agents. Clearly these people are marketing themselves as coaches with little understanding of what a coach really does. If you've read this far it shows you've got a true interest in becoming an ethical coach and I've no doubt that you are doing your homework!

What Background do I need?

This is an interesting question. Coaches come from all backgrounds. As previously mentioned there are coaches in the health and wellness world, in the executive development world, relationship coaches, coaches for families with children that have special needs, stress management coaches - the list goes on and on. Of course there are many coaches that cross pollinate and have several areas they focus on.

If you choose to focus your coaching on a specific area - lets say 'parenting troubled teens', then its a good idea that you've got a background of working with troubled teens so that you can best understand your client. Now a pure life coach is committed to recognizing that a client has their own answers and that the coaches job is to empower the client such that they see this clearly for themselves. Therefore, a coach is a generalist - their training and skill is really in communicating with people such that they can identify and build appropriate goals and actions that fulfill their dreams. If you naturally have this skill, you've got the greatest asset that a life coach needs. Some people have an innate tendency to 'be coach'. If you don't naturally have this skill, rest assured that wish practice you can develop it.

What Education if any Should I Get?

If you are considering becoming a coach, I definitely recommend that you get training. A coach training program often has coaching and mentorship not only on how to be a better coach, but also on how to build your business. Whether or not you choose to go through a full coach training certification program is a big decision as it will typically involve a commitment of 1-3 years, up to $15,000, and will require that you obtain between one and two hundred client hours to become certified. Prices, times to certification, and program depth and intensity vary greatly dependent on the program you choose.

Typically after an introductory class, you are encouraged to begin enrolling coaching clients. Therefore, you can charge what you are comfortable charging while you are going through the certification process (remember, you don't need a license to be a coach). I wish I knew the percentage of professional's out there calling themselves 'coaches' that have gone through a certification program. I am sure that someone's put an estimate out there but I've yet to find it. My suspicion is that it is less than 1/3 of all coaches. So being a 'certified' coach differentiates you for sure, however at the moment a typical coaching client probably would not know the difference.

If you elected not to become certified, my recommendation would be that you take some introductory courses, become familiar and comfortable with what coaching is, then try your hand on clients willing to work with you. If these classes are too expensive, read through this whole blog, read as many books as you can find on coaching and develop a toolset which you can stake claim to and comfortably use to team with clients to promote their advancement and self discovery. Make yourself an expert coach based on the knowledge of what a coach is and what they do.

I remember having a conversation with one woman that a friend referred to me. She wanted to change careers, she was very interested in life coaching and she felt she had been coaching friends and co-workers for years. She did have a good understanding of what life coaching was. Furthermore she said she new a number of people that would be willing to pay her for coaching! As I coached her, all she needed to hear was herself confirming that it was OK to get started - even if she had doubts and worries as to what a formal coaching session would look like. She had a fantastic motivation to learn regardless of whether or not that would be in the framework of a credential program (and I don't know if she elected to enroll in one).

What is the ICF

The ICF (International Coach Federation) is the leading coach credentialing agency on the market. Many coaches have opted to become a member of the ICF (by paying an annual fee to be a member), but this is certainly not a requirement to be a coach. The ICF is strongly supportive of coaching becoming a licensed field - similar as to what you see with psychologists etc. Clearly they have incentive as they would be the leading credentialing agency and this would greatly increase their membership. Many coaches believe that this will come to fruition in the next 5-10 years. At that point in time its likely we'd see a large decrease in the number of people calling themselves coaches as well as an increase in the credibility and the stature of the industry.

I present this because if you did elect to go through a coach training program, the ICF provides a list of programs that are accredited. By training through one of these accredited programs, it is expected that your certification would be grandfathered into the status of a certified coach should a license become required. This might be one thing to consider as you contemplate what level of training and education you would like to participate in as well as who provides that training.

In Summary

To summarize, if you've been considering becoming a professional coach (life coach), its important to educate yourself on what a coach is and is not. There is a lot of information on the internet available (much on this site) that can provide you with a foundation for understanding coaching models and how to 'be coach'.

Legally, at this point in time, there are no requirements to obtain a certification or license for someone to begin calling themselves a coach (in that regards, it's similar to consulting). If you would like to begin coaching on a specific topic, its great to have a background on that topic but make sure that you know why you are differentiating what you are doing as coaching rather than consulting.

Educationally there are many coach training programs available. I suggest that you attend at least some coaching courses (or hire your own coach) such that you begin to understand how coaching works. If you do elect to go with a coach training program, a good thing to consider would be whether or not is is recognized by the International Coach Federation such that you will not to become re-certified in the future should this become an industry requirement.

I hope this answers your first set of questions on how to become a life coach - I am sure it will lead to more questions. I'll provide more coaching tips, tools and suggestions throughout the course of the year on this website- so visit often. Till then...

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Be Well

South Miami

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Setting Goals:

Being a visionary is required in a business and without vision, it is hard to survive in the industry. Business Coaching is a way through which business owners can learn to create a vision for a company. By creating a vision statement, employees, shareholders will know the objective and the direction of the business. Thus it’ll ultimately help a business to set and achieve goals in time. So, it is the most important thing that a business owner will learn from the coaching sessions.

Accurate Pricing:

Sometimes business owners while deciding the pricing of their products or services and they use different tactics like discounts, free trials etc to attract a group of customers. But such tactics can be bad for their business process as per their vision and mission. By doing so, there may be negative impacts on the breakeven analysis of the business. Here a Business Coach can help a business owner with multiple business tools like Price Discount Calculator, Break Even Calculator etc. Such tools ensure that that the pricing and discount should be in accordance with the industry and the vision of the company.

Team Engagement and High Productivity:

High productivity in any business can be achieved only when it’s employees will be engaged with each other. There should not be any loopholes in the work process and communication. Sometimes it takes too much effort to deliver high productivity due to lack of the engagement and enthusiasm in the workforce. Business Coach helps business owners to align the employees with the business goals through different engagement processes like Break Down Analysis, Weekly Operation Reviews etc.

To perform all the above-mentioned things is somewhat difficult for a business owner without getting coached by a business coach. Building a business plan, implement it and identifying new business opportunities are the few things which need a assistance from a business guru so that he can recommend necessary changes to make it more efficient. So if you find yourself or know anyone who is in a need of Business Coach in Oklahoma then do let me know in comments.